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126
PHONOLOGY
§ 87

theg ‘cattle’: Lat. pecus, Lith. pėkus, Skr. pás̑u ‘cattle’; W. talch ‘flake’: Lat. plancus, E. flag-stone, flake, √pelāq‑;—W. twll ‘hole’ < *tuk-slo‑s, tyllu ‘to pierce’: Lat. pungo, punctum,peuk̑/g̑‑. It seems also as if p at the end of a root or stem beginning with a guttural sometimes became t, as W. pryd ‘personal appearance’, Ir. cruth: Lat. corpus, Skr. kr̥p- ‘aspect’ < *qr̥p‑;—W. cawad ‘shower’: Ar. *qeuēp- § 63 vii (3);—W. caled ‘hard’, as a noun ‘difficulty’ b.b. 65: ? Gk. χαλεπός (χ- < qh‑).

iii. Ar. p, before disappearing in Kelt., doubtless first became a bilabial f, then h. When the stop of the p was beginning to be loosened, any reaction in favour of the explosive articulation would naturally take the form of transferring the stop, that is, of substituting for the loosening labial p, the labiovelar q; or, where the word had a guttural already, the dental t. Before s, both the substitution and the regular development took place; the former, ‑qs‑, attested later as ‑x- in Gaul. Crixos, gives W. ‑ch‑; the latter, ‑fs‑, gives W. ‑ff‑. Before t, I have assumed the former, as the substitution of q for p, known to occur, seems more likely than that of χ for f, so that pt > qt > χt is more probable than pt > ft > χt.

iv. Before s, p > q > k after a rounded vowel; thus *upsel- > *uksel- > *ouksel- > W. uchel, Ir. ūasal; *lopsq- > *loksk- > W. llusgo § 96 iii (5);—similarly before n; *supn- > *supn- > W. hun ‘sleep’, Ir. sūan, § 63 viii (1); *n̥-u̯o-dup‑n- > W. an-o-ẟun ‘bottomless’, cf. annwfn § 102 iv (2), √dheup/b‑; so possibly before t; W. tuth ‘trot’ < *tupt‑: O. Bulg. tŭpati ‘palpitare’, tŭpŭtati ‘palpitare, calcare’, Gk. τύπτω. Original q before t had become k earlier (in It.-Kelt.), and develops as k, as in poeth above. m before p prevents the diphthongization: W. llost < *lompst- § 96 ii (3).

§ 87. i. Ar. t (Lat. t; Gk. τ; Germ. þ, ð; Lith. t; Skr. t) and Ar. th (Gk. θ; Skr. th) appear in Pr. Kelt, as t. Thus Ar. *tauros > Lat. taurus, Gk. ταῦρος: Ir. tarb, W. tarw;—Ar. *tep‑: W. tes, twymn, tân § 86;—Ar. *trei̯es > Skr. tráyas, Gk. τρεῖς, Lat. trēs: W. tri, Ir. trī, ‘three’.—Ar. *arətrom > W. aradr ‘plough’: Gk. ἅροτρον.—Ar. *pl̥thə- > Gk. πλάτανος, Gaul. ‑λιτανος, O. W. litan, W. llydan ‘broad’, § 63 viii (1).

ii. In Ar. the first t in the group tt had become an affricative; this stage is represented thus tˢt; in Skr. it went back to tt (just as tst, with original s, gave tt in Skr.), in Gk. it became στ, in Germ. ss, in Lat. ss, in Pr. Kelt. ss, appearing in W. generally as s. Example: base meleit- ‘honey’: FR *melit-tos ‘honeyed’